“Dear Heroin,
I’m a big sister
I’m the big sister of a boy that you stole
Really,
He took you and then
You took him

He still lives
No thanks to you
But might not always
He might die every time you two meet
You’re the ex-girlfriend the whole family hates
Who keeps coming back
The one he loves blindly
The one who leaves traces every time you show up
Not just on him
On all of us
You are a stain that cannot be bleached
No amount of soap and water can get rid of you

You are fake
You are a science experiment gone awry
You’d be dead
If you were a person, I would have killed you
Maybe not physically
But with the sting of my words you’d surely not return
You’d finally leave my family alone
You are not a person
You are not something that I can defeat

You are the needle in his arm and the hole in my heart
You are the release of all pain for him and the cause of so much of mine
You are the reason I went for months
Laying my head on my pillow, tears in tow
Filling my heart with sorrow and my mind with fear
You’re an assassin of soul
You will be one of the worst things that I’ve ever known
I hate that I know you

I know he seeks you out
Sometimes I wish you were a person so that maybe you could say no when he can not
Sometimes I wish you were a person so that you could look into my pain stricken eyes and see what you’ve done
The irreparable damage
If you were a person
You’d feel
You’d see
You’d be locked away in a place where no one could find you
Where no other soul would know you how he knows you
How I have unfortunately come to know you

You are a bully
You taunt
The remnants of you are on his arms
In his blood
They will never be erased
I’ve tried to erase you

You’re like a song that I hate that keeps playing in my mind
You are the shoe that keeps dropping
You are the tinfoil found beneath his bed
You are the shadow that has loomed over my family for years
You are the shadow that no one can run from
You are the shadow who keeps trying to darken our lives
You are the shadow that walks next to all of us now

My brother still breathes
He walks
He speaks

I still breathe
I walk
I speak

Yet because of you we often have nothing to say to one another
The gap that has found its way in between us widened because of you
With a single syringe
With a single push
You enter
You take over
You plant your seed
You cause ruin to people who did not seek it
I never took you in
I did not give you a home
Still you are here
In my house”